


In-between

by rohesia



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anne's POV, F/F, Post Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 15:22:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11512134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohesia/pseuds/rohesia
Summary: Their new first kiss, as new people, as old people making amends, is almost tentative, like their old first, but with no knives in the way and no uncertainty muddying their feelings. The only thing in the way is forgiveness.





	In-between

She waits for Max in her office at the tavern. Max has been spending most nights there as of late, either working or enjoying Idelle's company. Anne doesn't see her much, mostly because Idelle avoids her – and not out of fear – and she would be happy to stay out of her way, but tonight she's gonna risk it. After sitting in one of the empty chairs it hits her. She's let herself in, which is something she used to do all the time, in Max's old rooms. This office is another world entirely. 

She remembers being here that night, watching Eleanor Guthrie trick Whatever The Fuck He Likes Being Called These Days into helping them kill eight men to save Max. The only moment in their brief acquaintanceship when she hadn't exactly wanted to rid the world of her. She doesn't grieve for Eleanor Guthrie, but Max does. There is something primal that needs no explanation in how Max had translated that grief into a bottomless rage, crossing an ocean and almost giving herself up to another world, all to avenge Eleanor Guthrie's death. Well, not only, but from how Jack recounted it to her, it had been the final drop. 

Now she is not sure this is permitted, even after Philadelphia, even after returning to Nassau and spending days and nights rebuilding their world. Looking at each other from across the room, delivering messages and barely having the time to greet each other, sharing a drink in the disquieting silence of the mostly empty tavern at the end of the day – or, most of the times, at the shy beginning of a new one, ghosts of disagreeing voices still echoing and promising more disagreement for the next morning... Finding a corner of peace and stillness to be just Anne and Max is as hard as going a day without hearing someone whisper Flint's name. 

It's only that upon opening her eyes that morning, still tired from the previous day's work but lucid and awake like she hadn't felt in what seems like ages, she had known what to do. No dream or specific thought prompted that state of being. She had found it waiting for her behind her eyes, at the back of her throat, in the tips of her fingers, already leaving soundless, restless words on her tongue.

Awkwardness is something that she always felt in her bones, but what she feels now is borne out of months of confused feelings burning like hot iron and steadily being shaped into a new balance. So she waits, pacing the room and trying as she might to ignore the much older voices that haunt this room. The newly rebuilt office bears no resemblance whatsoever to the old one. Some pieces are missing, the furniture is placed differently, the feeling it gives is one of elegance and coziness at the same time. 'Make them feel at ease and then attack.' And Max has got that down to an art, especially these days, what with being queen in the shadows.

She barely notices the door opening, and when she turns around Max is wearing an expression of surprise and a luxurious dressing gown. Her hair is still down, falling in soft locks on her shoulders and framing her face. Anne is pretty sure her lungs are giving out.

“Anne, has something happened? You could have woken me, you didn't have to wait here. Have you been here long?” Max asks, crossing the room to stand near Anne. 

Anne fixes her eyes on the intricate design of Max's dressing gown, golden arabesques glistening in the weak sunlight. “An hour, I think.”

When she doesn't offer anything else, Max encourages her by not pushing further. Her hands are respectfully folded in front of her lap and Anne is reminded of Philadelphia. But she knows it's more than simple formality from the way Max's knuckles whiten. She wants to kiss each and every one of them and the awareness explodes in her chest like lightning. 

“I was waiting for you.”

Max is silent, but her eyes speak loud enough to betray the breaths she's been holding for months. Waiting waiting waiting. 

“...waiting for you.”

“Anne... Anne, I'm here.”

Her legs move before she can consciously think about what to do. It is not like the first time she went to her, a tangle of rioting instincts battling inside her, crying Max's name in the middle of the night. Her thoughts have never been so clear and defined. Calm in a way that doesn't forebode storms and blood. Just calm, like dawn and Max's voice whispering reassurances on her lips, or I love yous. 

Their new first kiss, as new people, as old people making amends, is almost tentative, like their old first, but with no knives in the way and no uncertainty muddying their feelings. The only thing in the way is forgiveness. 

Hurts worse than a knife at the throat when, sharp enough to kill, isn't carefully handled. Anne has handled a lot in her life, but forgiveness is new. You can't learn to use it, it learns to use you, it settles in your bones, gradual and distrusting like a wild cat, and one day its presence becomes familiar, even comforting. A reminder of what is long gone and what lies ahead. Sometimes it doesn't come, and Anne had wanted it to stay away, to coil itself around somebody else's heart. She would have managed it, had Max not entered her cabin, awakening her resentment. It had been enough to start the process. She had to hate her to finally forgive her, and forgiveness is not kind. 

A blade of light cuts the room in two, painting the darkness behind Anne's eyelids of a blinding red and she can't tell whether it's Max's hands that are burning her or the rising sun. 

 

§§§

 

Nassau doesn't feel like home. Never has. The first time Anne set foot onto it, it gave her the impression of a large prison built in the middle of the ocean. A convincing illusion where rejects could sing songs of freedom and not see the fucking irony. Anne didn't much care, so long as she got to be with Jack and do what she did best. All men bleed the same, after all.

A rebuilt, Rogers-free Nassau is no different. The clock is constantly, ruthlessly ticking, and the horizon already darkens with the shadows of a new army. There is always a feeling of impending disaster looming around every corner, staining the carefree laughter of newly arrived men, hiding between the folds of Max's girls' dresses like knives, turning every drunken song into a bloody howl. 

Not even Max can keep the shadows at bay, although she can conceal them and don them every day like a cloak, vicious yet familiar. It's the price she pays. Anne can never strip her of them, can never kiss her skin without tasting doom. But, she thinks, then Max can never strip her of the sea and the blood it carries. She wonders if the monsters they carry love each other like they love each other. She wonders if they could love each other in another time, free of monsters and sacrifices. 

The question stops ringing in her ears the moment she spots Max in the tavern, a cup of rum already in her hand, waiting for Anne to take it. Waiting for Anne to step into the illusion and out of the madness, just for a few minutes. Anne doesn't care about the illusion so long as Max is there. It's easier to ignore on the Lion, where the sea isn't just a song in her ears but a roar, threatening to swallow her whole, real in its inevitability; where her feet feel secure in the constant swaying of the ship, whereas sand proves to be so much fucking trickier. 

Max seems to read her mind as steps closer, her eyes mirroring her slight discomfort and then settling into high relief when their hands finally touch.

“I missed you,” she always greets her, and today is no different. Anne pays the other customers no mind as she accepts the cup, and leans into her, her free hand tightly clutching Max's. Their fingers twine with newfound easiness. 

Philadelphia left them in a new obscurity they're learning to navigate. It's not like before and Anne wouldn't expect it to be, but she still wants to be found, and if there's one reason she doesn't completely dread catching sight of Nassau every month, it is this. Her. Them. 

“Missed you,” she echoes. 

She doesn't say it like it's the last time she will say it. She knows it could be, she knows one day she's going to miss her forever, in life or in death, but dwelling on the thought is pointless, as Max told her a few months prior. 

 

_'Don't greet me like you're saying goodbye. We already said goodbye once.'_

_'Lucky us.'_

_'Indeed. Now I know I don't want to say goodbye to you anymore.'_

_'Ain't your choice to make, or mine.'_

_'I feel it, too, Anne. Every month. Every day. I know there's the possibility you will not be on that ship, that there could not even be a ship. That there could be an army. And I know my position here isn't much more secure than yours is. Or Jack's. Or Mark's. But we're here now and I will fight for this, like I already did. What I won't do, is act like I already lost you.'_

_'That's not what I...'_

_'I know.'_

_Max says I know like she says I love you._

 

The worst thing about illusions is that the people living in it are still real. Their stakes are very fucking real. An illusion doesn't shatter, it's them that will fall on it and cut themselves. It could end any day, bring the world down and leave them burning, but they already burned once, her thoughts remind her in Max's voice, so they might as well take this and enjoy it while it lasts. There will always be a time for fighting, for bleeding, for goodbyes. 

Sometimes Anne wonders if she might be living in an illusion of her own making, where her hands don't always itch for a knife, but it must be a pretty powerful one, if not for the warmth of Max's fingers laced with her own and the animated bickering of Mark and Jack somewhere on the beach. 

Max takes her hand to her lips and kisses it, “Drink, now, I will be right back.”

No one dares comment on it, either because they don't give a single fuck who fucks who, either because Anne has become an even more deadly figure since the Lion. And her hands bear the scar to prove it. Also, Max's got everyone by the balls.

 

§§§

 

Max pushes her against the mattress, fast hands already working open Anne's shirt, fingertips leaving a path of shivers in their wake and prompting her to do the same. She's grateful for the number of times she's battled against the laces of Max's dresses, because they seem to disappear at her touch, or maybe it's just eagerness and the magic Max is working as she sucks the patch of sensitive skin behind her ear and breathes her in, lips tracing her throat and chasing her pulse, dancing with its every jump. 

There is something she has no words for in the way their naked bodies feel when they press together as their clothes are discarded. The first time Anne had felt like drowning, as if the sea had raged its way into their room and taken her. Now she feels light, reassured in her movements and their bodies grind together without any interference, without doubt, just flesh against flesh. It's so simple she couldn't name it, whatever it is that guides her.

Anne lets herself be pinned to the mattress, Max's leg between hers sliding against the silk sheets and coming to a stop when it finds her, breath hitching in her throat and melting into a hot moan. 

“Want you. Don't stop, please, don't--”

She spreads her legs wider and arches her back, moving with Max and not running from it. Pleasure builds slowly and steadily between her legs and rises through her whole body like the tide, but its waters are sweet and forgiving and she welcomes them.

“I want your hands... Max, I need your hands.”

“Anything you want, my love.”

When Max kisses her Anne can barely respond, her mouth open as gentle fingers circle her clitoris, teasing her until her legs almost snap close. Her voice dies in her throat when Max presses harder and rubs, fingers working faster and following Anne's desire. 

“Max... fuck, Max!”

She comes with Max's voice in her ears, hands still between her legs when she opens her eyes and lazily fingering her like Max knows Anne likes. She sighs and moves on the mattress to angle her head to kiss Max's neck and explore her body with her hands, finding her fuller around her hips than she remembered. She smiles, content, and lets Max kiss her, slow and deep. 

Somehow managing to escape Max's mouth, Anne straddles Max's hips, bending down to kiss her again, biting her lip and sucking it as she slowly but steadily slides down the bed to settle between her thighs. She lays kisses all over them, biting and sucking when Max's encourages her and breathes her name like a prayer, trying to stand on her elbows to touch Anne's head or holding her hand.

“Tell me what you want...” Anne says, hands going up and down Max's thighs and tightening and grabbing to spread them when Max tells her. 

She can't say she can't remember why this used to frighten her, but as her tongue traces Max's sex and tastes her, the memory simply leaves her mind and is drowned by Max's moans and incoherent words and delirious praise. 

“Touch... Touch yourself, cherié, for me.”

Anne groans and complies, her moan turning into a sob when her fingers find her already wet and oversensitive sex and rub at it, Max's hands in her hair anchoring her to the present moment. She hisses when she goes back to eating Max out and feels her hair being pulled and the mattress shift as Max arches her back and cries out Anne's name.

 

§§§

 

The sea still sings in her ears, rattling her bones, filling her heart to the brim until it starts burning in her eyes, looking for a way out, salty and unforgiving; the only thing able to steady her is the rhythm of Max's heart beating against her back. 

She is not afraid of the sea. It claimed her, it drank her blood and it carries her rage, her screams, her last breath in its waves, ready to sink ships and claim many more with them. She is a sacrifice, and if choice is an illusion she'll happily bleed for it, knowing there's worse out there.

No altar, no sacred words, no trace of holiness in the water she gives herself to. She doesn't pray to it, it doesn't listen. Not out of cruelty, Anne knows it. 

She is not afraid of the sea. Her blood sings its song and aches for it, like a blade craves flesh and blood. But the world ain't just salt and blood: there's something else in-between, and that's where she fights and finds herself.

Safe and content Max chases Anne's warm body in her sleep, steady and terrifying in her endless generosity, in her anger stored between her lips, behind her teeth, in her brow, in every held breath, in every drop of sweat and unspilled blood. Sacrifice is etched in her bones and she asks for nothing but Anne's arms, her breath in her hair, her voice in the morning, her hand to hold, a promise to love her monsters as Max loves hers. 

She's not afraid. Not anymore.


End file.
